


Designed That Way

by localfreak



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Flashbacks, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6364579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/localfreak/pseuds/localfreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 12Days Christmas Challenge 2015-16. </p><p> </p><p>The asset is a machine. The asset is also malfunctioning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Designed That Way

The asset was malfunctioning. It knew this.

It woke to find itself in unfamiliar alleyways and dark public parks shut for the night. It did not return to base. It did not seek out its handlers. It did not _want_ to seek its handlers. This was incorrect- the asset should not _want_ or _not want_.

 

Once it woke to find itself in a room full of people.

This was outside of protocol- the asset was used to waking in new places, but there were always handlers and technicians there and it was always briefed on the mission before being transported to crowded places. No one in this room was dressed well, all were bundled up and unwashed. Some talked to each other. Others talked to themselves. The asset’s hands shook and its leg twitched up and down.

Clean-faced young people passed out bowls of something hot. One of them put a bowl in front of the asset and a spoon. Food was not normally given to the asset- usually there were injections or tubes or tasteless drinks the asset must swallow.

The asset tasted.

Vegetables, overcooked but still with flavours. Flavours.

The asset saw a room filled with children in its mind.  
A woman in a black uniform- _habit_ -passed out spoons to the hungry boys. The asset saw one boy- too thin and bony, fighting not to cough, face getting red with the effort of keeping quiet _silence at mealtimes_. The asset saw a wooden board with rules carved on them.

This, then, was a memory.

 

 

The asset woke again and found himself in a warehouse. He was not alone, but the others presented no threat. They did not approach. They did not look at the asset. They did not look at anything. One woman stared at the ceiling, a man rustled through a collection of carrier bags with him. The asset curled into the corner of the room and breathed. It was cold. The asset saw a tiny room, a glass window with ice patterns forming on the inside. That blonde boy again- the bony one with the wheeze in his breath, hunched over, sitting by the window drawing. He shivered under a too-thin coat. His long hands were smeared with graphite. The asset wanted to tell him to come away from the window. The asset wanted to build a fire in the grate for the boy to warm those thin hands by the flames. The asset was unhappy that he couldn’t keep this boy warm.

This, then, was also a memory. The asset had wanted before. He had forgotten how to, but now he remembered wanting.

The asset was not malfunctioning then, but returning to his original programming. This was better, somehow.

 

 

Slowly, the spaces between waking and sleeping became shorter. The asset found donated clothes outside charity stores- unfamiliar and good quality too- including a long coat that would have warmed that blond boy from head to toe. He found food left on park benches and in waste bins behind storefronts. More food than it was used to having. Hard bread that could have made puddings once, soft fruit that could have been preserved. The slowly, he began to remember when he fell asleep and wake in the same place he had chosen to sleep in.

There were no more unexpected gaps in time. Was this how it was for people?

He was good at pretending to be a person- or had been once. There were missions – he might not remember them but some things he’d kept. Languages, for example- he knew many of them. He knew, too, the different accents in this city, the way they clung to a person. 

He knew unlovely swear words and the smell of bakeries. He did not remember why Mrs Muldoon’s soda bread recipe was relevant to a mission- nor who Mrs Muldoon was, but he remembered it nonetheless.

 

 

An old man, slumped by the bakery dumpster coughed. The asset, who had been reaching inside for packages of old scones and bread looked down at him. The cough made another memory of that pale boy, and a woman with his hair who coughed and coughed into a handkerchief and Bucky’s stomach had clenched with fear as the cough got worse.

Who the hell is Bucky?

The asset handed the bread to the old man, and fled.

Sometimes, these memories are inconvenient, they come too quickly for him to see the gaps in between them. 

The asset remembered pulling a boy to his feet after an alley brawl.

He remembered being pulled up off a terrible table where a man who made him feel sick to think of filled him with poison.

He remembered reaching- reaching out in the snow.

 

 

“Hey, man, we were wondering when you’d turn up.” 

A hand before him, welcoming him in from the cold. Sam Wilson, his eyes cautious and without his wings, searched his face and liked what he found there.

Bucky took his hand, and came in from the cold. He wasn’t pretending to be a person.

He remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Savage Garden's 'Memories Fade'.


End file.
